1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and devices for making a print and method for managing image data, and more particularly, to a method and a device for ordering an additional image print and to a method for managing digital image data for used in ordering an additional print.
2. Description of Related Art
Digital photographs are spreading with increasing digital still cameras (DSC). Digital images can be viewed on display devices such as CRTs of television sets or of personal computers. But many digital images are also viewed in the form of prints like conventional silver-halide photographic prints.
In order to obtain a digital image print, two ways are generally used. One way is to use user's personal computer and printer connected each other. The personal computer reads a digital image and controls the printer to make a print. Another way is to use a print service laboratory that offers a service to print a picture for a customer. The print service laboratory makes a digital image print with the same quality of a silver-halide photographic picture, using a high-performance digital printer. This digital image print processed by the print service laboratory has higher quality than that of the print processed by the common digital printer.
When a customer orders a print to the print service laboratory, the customer has to provides image data of a digital image to the service laboratory by using either of the following two methods. One method is to provide the print service laboratory with a recording medium in which digital images to be printed are stored. Another method is to transmit image data to a server computer of the print service laboratory from user's computer through a communication system such as the Internet.
Image data of a digital image captured by a DSC is stored in a storage device such as hard disk of a computer. The stored image data is used as necessary. For example, the stored image data is retrieved from the hard disk when a customer orders an additional print. Meanwhile, it is possible to use a dedicated product for storing and viewing images instead of a personal computer, which dedicated product has a large capacity of storage device. It is also possible to store the image data into a storage medium for used with a detachable storage device such as an optical disk drive device or a CD-R device.
The personal computer and dedicated device have a search function for searching image data stored in its storage device. Keyword searching is performed using keywords such as a date of photography, a date of image storage, and a title of an image.
It is not so easy to search and retrieve a desired image from the storage devices or the storage media storing large number of digital images. If considerable time passes after images have been created and stored, it is difficult to assign an adequate keyword to the image because a customer cannot clearly remind the date when he took a picture or stored into the storage device or the storage media.
If a customer wants to search an image stored in his personal computer based upon an image title, it is necessary for him to give each image the image title in advance, spending considerable time and effort. However, after considerable time has passed, even the user who named the image title tends to forget the image title. If other person who does not know the image title searches the image based upon a keyword, it is more difficult to search the image because of difficulty in designating a right keyword to the image.